Progressive insurance company’s new game show-style event on Twitch imploded this week when participating streamers discovered their channels were being flooded with thousands of fake viewers. What should have been a standard sponsored competition quickly turned into controversy when streamers noticed their viewer counts skyrocketing beyond believable numbers.
Creators, including Carolinekwan, Will Neff, and AustinShow, found their channels suddenly showing over 30,000 concurrent viewers—numbers dramatically higher than their typical audiences. Carolinekwan usually attracts around 2,000 viewers, while BotezLive typically reaches 4,000–5,000.
The smoking gun wasn’t just the inflated numbers, but the eerily quiet chat activity that didn’t match the supposed audience size. Chat moves at a lightning pace in legitimate streams with tens of thousands of viewers. Instead, participants saw suspiciously slow chats that betrayed the viewbotting scheme.
Carolinekwan confirmed the view botting through Discord messages and screenshots, announcing she would no longer stream the event. Will Neff and AustinShow quickly followed suit, refusing to continue participating in the compromised competition.
Caroline Kwan announces that she and boyfriend Will Neff will no longer be streaming the Progressive sponsored "NEXT" show on their channels due to viewbotting issues pic.twitter.com/GE5rLU92Wb
— yeet (@Awk20000) April 30, 2025
“Will was getting viewbotted late last night and mentioned several times he was considering ending his stream because of it,” reported one viewer familiar with the situation. The abnormal numbers had been appearing across several streamers’ channels simultaneously.
After creators started pulling out, Progressive looked like it was scrambling to fix things. Later broadcasts were restricted to fewer channels, notably BotezLive, which still showed questionable numbers around 20,000 viewers—lower than before but still far exceeding their normal reach.
Technical analysis pointed to possible embedding methods or third-party services like Asteri Livestream that can artificially boost viewer counts. These tactics place invisible or minimized stream players on external websites, counting as “views” despite no actual engagement.
This isn’t the first time sponsored Twitch events have faced viewbotting allegations. Similar patterns cropped up during previous branded competitions like “OTK Top Streamer“, suggesting a troubling trend in influencer marketing where agencies promise sponsors unrealistic viewership numbers.
For Progressive, what started as a regular marketing campaign quickly became a warning about the dangers of faking engagement numbers. The whole mess shows just how tricky it can be for creators to build genuine audiences when sponsors pressure them to deliver eye-catching stats.
